When Microsoft acquired zenimax did it have issues like the bad culture, financial issue, and how bad the IP’s were getting and such I’m just curious on the zenimax situation the reason why they bought that company?
They definitely were having some financial issues from what I’d heard.
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Zenimax were known for their single player games and they are amazing. TES, FO, Dishonored, Wolfenstein, ect
But for some reason most of them don’t sale. You could see a shift when they started to make games like FO76, Wolfenstein Youngblood and Redfall.
So it was probably a mix of the owners wanted to sale and finance issues.
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They were still a private company. When you are a AAA publisher/developer and are still private a few misses, be it missed sales targets or poor reviews, can lead to financial issues quickly.
When you have a long time partner with deep pockets that is willing to let you continue operating as you always have without fearing failure, you take it.
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They had financial issues and pressure to release high income titles.
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The owners wanted to cash out. They had a very good offer and moved on. Its a brilliant buy from Microsoft.
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I probably assume the reason why MS was trying to buy ABK despite 38 or 39 regions that said yes to deal which is not just how bad the culture is but financial issue too especially my particular reason why I think Ubisoft is MS next acquisition on MS shopping list along with maybe square Enix.
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That figures about the reason of MS buying Zenimax just like how MS is buying ABK despite the hurdles and the reason I aske that is if u r ubiosoft and square Enix that’s why I feel like it could be on their shopping list when the ABK deal gets certified.
This^^
Not a lot of companies will be willing to sell if they are doing well, or if they have a good path for growth.
Zenimax missed the games as a service boat. Given that the games are getting more and more expensive to develop, and the time required to ship a game has also increased significantly, you need to have some recurring revenue to offset the risk of a game not doing well.
This i believe is a general trend with the industry today and likely why more independent developers are willing to sell so easily.
There is a greater discussion to be had regarding what we as gamers are doing to fuel this trend, but that is a topic for a different day.
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Microsoft wanted to own Zenimax for years, in fact, once Spencer was promoted to VP and got the money they wanted to have Zenimax in their first wave, but Robert Trump who was one of the biggest shareholders was against this and kept denying until he was on his deathbed/passed away which made the acquisition possible, I do believe that he was the one who made Ghostwire and Deathloop PS5 exclusives as a means to kill MS interest despite more than 15 years of partnership.
A little background on what was going on which correlates to Redfall and Jason’s article: In 2017 they released Prey and then made an E3 campaign called “Save Player One” to make people to play more single player games as they were releasing Wolfenstein TNC, Evil Within 2 and Dishonored DOTO. Unfortunately all these games underperformed so the higher ups changed their plans overnight to the multiplayer and GaaS focus, most of their studios had to do games with these features in mind and it all went wrong, their releases which were very rushed sucked a lot and during the development it created massive conflicts that saw people leaving their studios, in some cases an exodus like it was with Arkane Austin.
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Zenimax has a well documented history of being an extremely shit publisher.
What Went Wrong With Human Head’s Prey 2? - IGN
In the following months, a source claimed, "Bethesda denied further funding of the project, and started failing milestones,” asking for changes and fixes without following through on its previous promise to give the team more time. The promise, however, was not inked on the contract, so Bethesda had no legal obligation to fulfill it. In addition, a source said, Bethesda was likely concerned with the “dated planning, tools, and techniques” Human Head was using. Meanwhile, the contract didn’t give the creative team any leverage: Prey 2 was the only game Human Head was legally allowed to develop on its own until the agreement expired – to fill time and keep the lights on, the studio supported the development BioShock Infinite and Defiance. If it were to ever release, the team needed more cash and time to meet the rising demands to adjust Prey 2, which “needed a lot of work” and was “lackluster” from the publisher’s perspective.
Conflict erupted – Human Head asked Bethesda to provide additional time and money, while Bethesda asked Human Head to meet the criteria agreed upon by their existing agreement.
At this point, Bethesda "thought they could bully [Human Head] into a corner,” a source said, and the publisher made a move to buy Human Head. “It was one of few studios that could work with and improve id Technology. They wanted to buy us at a sweet price,” but the developer denied the buyout. Human Head didn’t want to permanently marry itself to a publisher that was “bleeding Human Head dry.” This would limit the studio’s ability to work on its own creative endeavors down the line, potentially with other publishers.
There have been several posts back in the GAF days about how this technique of throttling their talent to acquire them on the cheap has been prevalent not only wiht Human Head, but also Inxile, Splash Damage and Allegedly Arkane.
Brian Fargo On InXile’s Darkest, Publisher-Driven Days | Rock Paper Shotgun
RPS: It’s interesting that you went from something like Hunted: Demon’s Forge to this. That, to me, felt like an RPG that was all of the… “This needs to be on console, so we have to include elements from shooters and things like that” obligatory pandering.
Fargo: The original pitch for that was to be a dungeon crawl. That was what that game wanted to be. Then it got slowly changed to become more of a shooter. But that’s not my background, so… To me, that was a typical failing, where you have the arguments about what a product should be and everything that goes with it. People don’t know sometimes how little the developer can have input-wise into a product, even if it’s theirs. The opening cinematics weren’t done by us. The voice casting was not done by us. We didn’t get to direct the voices in the game. There are all these things that go on that are just pulled away from the developer, that we had no control over.
Ultimately, the people that control the purse strings are going to control the direction of the product. But yeah, how it came out was very different than what my pitch was.
Ex-Human Head developer alleges on Twitter that Bethesda is lying about Prey 2 | Page 2 | NeoGAF
Regarding the Arkane allegations. Still trying to find the Splash Damage details.